The Bleeding Tree by Hollie Starling: A sincere story of loss

Hollie Starling’s father died by suicide during the pandemic and in this book she describes her “pathway through grief”, guided by folktales and rituals. A librarian, she runs a web page, Folk Horror Magpie.

Her family lived in Cleethorpes, near Grimsby in Lincolnshire, England, and this interesting place is beautifully evoked. Starling is an excellent writer, who employs a rich vocabulary deftly, with agility and imagination. Her account of family life, her father’s death and period of bereavement, is narrated with grace and honesty, and is riveting.

The personal story is interlaced with semi-invented or rewritten folktales and copious references to various folktales, legends, myths and rituals associated with death, nature and particularly with trees. Stories from Bali and Argentina rub shoulders with tales from Serbia, China, India, the Moriori people of Chatham Island – you name it.

There is an extensive bibliography but – since this is a popular book – no footnotes. “Some scholars suggest that Ogham was created as a cryptic means of communication between communities opposing the authority of Roman Britain.” Perhaps, but which scholars? There are several examples of such loose comments, and some inaccuracies.

In pictures: Summer solstice celebrations at the Hill of Tara

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Essentially she is drawing freely on what I have called elsewhere “the folklore jumble sale”: although clearly well-read, she is like an octopus in a library – or at a computer – pulling a legend from Australia here, a saint from Sweden there, and interpreting everything subjectively, if intelligently. There’s no law against it. Robert Graves did it and so did James Frazer – and this book reminds me of those great, flawed and discredited classics, although it is lighter and more readable.

Anyway, Starling’s intention is not to educate us about folklore, but to tell her own story of loss, counterpointing the personal with the mythic. The device works. This is definitely one of the better books on the topic of grief after bereavement, even if, as anthropology, it lacks credibility. It strikes me as fully sincere – although a cynic might be forgiven for suspecting that, with so many grief books coming on stream, the bereaved person as author now needs to find some new angle. And the folklore jumble sale is always ready to oblige.

Éilís Ní Dhuibhne is a writer and critic, and president of The Folklore of Ireland Society